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Kitesurf365
TechCast #24 | Episode # 405
00:59:55
On today’s TechCast DK and I so another AMA. These questions have come in from the Portrait Discord and Kiteforum. DK talks Kiteboards: WOO Sports: Support the show: Contact...
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the kitesurf 365 podcast.
- [00:04]
B
Welcome back to the show. I hope you all had a great weekend. On today's episode, DK returns for another TechCast. This is another AMA. We've received a bunch of questions. It's going to take us, I think, a few episodes to get through all of these, but these questions mainly have come from the Portrait, Discord and Kite forum. Don't forget to follow me at kiteserve365 for all the latest episodes. Ladies and gentlemen, Dave K. Dk. You ready for the WOO Worlds?
- [00:39]
A
Dude, I am so ready and so amping for it. This is. This is like, I think I've told the listeners in the past, like, my. My froth level just starts at the start of spring and we're like. We're like seven days into spring now. And then it ramps to the start of Woo Worlds and then it ramps after we worlds all the way through to the final of. Final of Kota. So it's like, this is. This is like, this is my run into Christmas. So it's all good.
- [01:11]
B
Even for us, mate. You know, it's like, you know, there's been nothing happening for months, right? It's like, you know, there's. It literally is. Everything is go, go, go from September on right through. Till. Till Christmas time. Really. Yeah.
- [01:22]
A
So how many events right now are on. Are on standby? So between Mega Loop and Tarifa and. And Cold Hawaii, it's like they could all happen in the same week.
- [01:37]
B
Like, I don't think. Is Tarifa on. Is. Is the. Is Tarifa back on hold? Is it. Is this. Are we talking about 4 full power? I know they were thinking. Haven't you heard anything? Information?
- [01:48]
A
You probably know more about it than me, mate.
- [01:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right. So they are looking to go September, October. So. And then there's still that. Then there's still the Port Apollo qualifier, which has been pushed back from the start of the year where it's been changed back, which kind of doesn't really make sense to me anymore. Those, those. Those. Those qualifiers. Especially now that, you know, Andre has made it very clear he's not going to ride those. You know, then, you know, you got the same guys riding all the time. Yeah, it's interesting. Anyway, get to this. This is Techcast24. This is another AMA. I tell you what, we've got so many questions here, dk. They've mainly come. Mainly come via the PI. The Portrait Discord or via Kite Forum. There is a few email topics in here. I am going to select a few here. I think in this essence of time I'm going to sort of paraphrase because there are multiple people talking about the same thing. Let's go straight to a single question. There's a lot of questions that are similar, but this is from Steve Mitchell. This came in via the email. We talking about the color run one time on kites and you mentioned that you know, color transfer can happen in panels when the, the kite is packed away wet and you were talking about using fresh water. He's saying, does that happen if the kite is packed away wet with salt water?
- [03:06]
A
Yeah, absolutely. No, this is a really good question. It's really great to come back to this. The little bit of background is that at least all of our canopy panels we have, we have some interesting new leading edge materials, but sort of traditional Dacron and all of our current canopy woven polyester fabrics and the dyes that turn those from basically white fabric into all the colors that we see are all water based dyes. And in fact even the, even the latest technology of these fully digital printed kites. So your brainchild and actually Nash has just released, released one out of their factory in China as well. Dye sublimation printing is also a water based dye. So the dyes being water based, there is, it is almost impossible to engineer the fabric to not have issues with color transfer in a, in particular situation. And the particular situation is the combination of sort of heat, high humidity and water vapor. And so the, it's those, the high humidity and water vapor sort of givens. But that combination is essentially the combination that's used to dye the fabric. So like that's the chemical process that's used to actually get that dye into the fabric. And then in the actually whether it's dye sublimation printing, which is done in sort of a heat press type arrangement, or for the bulk dyeing of fabric that's all done in big, essentially big washing machines, but pressurized washing machines that force the dye, the water based dye through the fabric. If you put the kite into a situation where you have a very dark color piece of fabric sitting against a very light colored piece of fabric and you add a little bit of moisture and a little bit of temperature, you are essentially asking that light colored, you're essentially putting that light colored fabric into the situation that created the dark color fabric and you will get color transfer. Fresh water is always going to be much worse for this than salt water because fresh water, just fresh water is A bit of solvent in this, in this scenario. But it does happen with, it does happen with salt water as well. It's always good practice to pack your kite away as dry as possible and if it's not possible to pack your kite away dry as soon as you get home, unpack it and leave it out loose so that it will, it will dry. It'll dry naturally. And particularly put it somewhere where it's not getting warm and you'll avoid color transfer problems. But essentially if you've got a kite that's got like very, very dark colored panels, blacks, dark blues, dark reds and white canopy panels, you put those two together, add a little bit of water, put it somewhere warm, you're going to end up with staining. The nice thing is, is it's only a, it's, it's only, it's purely cosmetic. There's no, there's no lifespan degradation or anything like that with the kite. The kite will last, it's last for as long as it was expected to last. It's just not going to look as nice. So yeah, that's the uptake on that.
- [06:32]
B
And why is salt water not as bad as freshwater?
- [06:36]
A
I think mainly because it doesn't evaporate as easily. That's. The salt kind of holds the, holds the water vapor a little bit, Crystallizes a bit. Yeah. So. Or like, or it could simply be that actually it might be that the salt causes the water to evaporate quicker and it causes less issues. There are, there are fabric experts and inorganic chemists that will be able to tell us, tell us more exactly. But in all my experience, fresh water is like 10 times more likely to have a color transfer problem than salt water. But it still can happen.
- [07:14]
B
This one we got a lot of questions on and it's about fins and the questions are particularly around the new portal fin and the Aquafin, Aya, Kiteboarding, De Yoda, Alisa, all asking very similar questions. Do you think brands will rethink their fins on their boards or leave it up to third parties?
- [07:34]
A
Alright, that is a really good question. The first thing I have to preface and say is I have not had an opportunity to ride any of these new sort of curved or the portal sort of tunnel style fin yet. Not for any other reason that I just haven't had a chance to grab, grab a set and put them on a board. But what I will say if you, if the audience goes back and listens to the DK talks, twin tips two part podcast back from. I think that was a 2023 one actually might have been, but we can put a link in the, in the show notes. One of the topics that came up in there was fin design and fin selection and myself and probably any of my contemporaries who are, who are full time, who are full time board designers, twin tip designers. We consider fins, or at least I definitely consider fins to be part of the, part of the tuning package when it comes to a board. And so, and in many cases, well, pretty much in all cases, I will choose the fin design before I, before I start designing the board. So the fin isn't an afterthought that gets bolted on later. It's a forethought that goes into the very start of the specification before I start designing the rest of the board. And so it is integral. Like it's not. Fin design is not an afterthought. It's not something that drops off the radar. It's just something that gets put on at the end after all the important work is done. It's definitely not. It's very fundamental. When it starts right at the very beginning for myself, fins are. There is. I use fins as a tuning device a lot where boards that have boards that have very straight outlines and very flat rockers that are naturally trek and track up wind very well, they tend to get very, they tend to get smaller fins on them because the. It's difficult to actually move that board around on the water. So if we're looking at the performance across a range of different styles of riding across a range of different riders, a board that is naturally very, that tends to track very straight naturally will be less fun to ride. If you put enormous fins on it. It'll just, it'll be locked in the entire time and there'll be just types of riding that just won't be fun because of that. So that they tend to have smaller fins. At the other end of the scales. If we're looking at smaller boards with more outline curve boards designed to edge a little bit harder, specifically big air style boards, they tend to get bigger fins because especially with more outline curve and smaller sizes, those boards tend to be looser or more rocker. Those boards tend to be less naturally directionally stable. And putting bigger fins on make, make that board more naturally stable, allow you to sort of hold your edge for a little bit longer. So none of these new fins are a new. The underlying philosophy isn't a new idea to me. It's hey, you're changing the fin design to change the tuning on the board. So the, in particular, all of these New these, these new aftermarket fins are aimed squarely at one particular, at one particular niche in the market and for one particular and for one particular characteristic of the board. And that is to hold on as long as possible before you leave the water, which sit. And that's, there is a, there's very much a correlation to be your ability to allow the, for the board to remain gripped on the water very much affects your ability to jump high. Basically the, the harder you can hold, the harder and longer you can hold the edge, the more line tension you'll develop and the bigger you'll jump. So these, these fins are aimed directly at that one characteristic. But like everything in life, there is compromises and if you're putting considerably more area and more shaping into the fins on your board, you are likely to compromise other parts of riding these boards. There has definitely been feedback saying that these, these fins create boards that are almost impossible to pull off the water and they're almost impossible to do rotations, grip and track amazingly well. But everything else becomes harder. So that may or may not be what you are trying to achieve with your board. Like if you're specifically going out to try and jump as high and as hard as possible, they will help you with that. Are they going to help you in light wind, are they going to help you in freestyle conditions, are they going to help you get better rotations off the water? Are they going to help you going to land a Rayleigh? That's up for debate. And are they going to be more catchy on high speed landings? That's very likely that if you're putting much bigger fins with much more, designed for much more grip, those fins at the fins on the tail are helping you track straight when you land. But the fins on the nose that are hopefully staying above the water are far more likely to catch and trip on a piece of chop. So a landing that you may have landed, you may have ridden away on with a more traditional fin, you might find you trip up and fall with these very specific application fins. So yeah, that's my take on it actually. There's also a couple of other things about whether they're compatible with your board. There's some sorts of tip shaping that might prevent some of these styles of fins actually mounting correctly. So there's a whole bunch of things to it. But at the end of the day, if you're curious about using them, it's one of the easiest things to do is to unbolt fins and bolt new ones on. And I've recommended for years like have a, like you can change the characteristics of your board by changing the size of the fin that you bolt onto it. And they're a relatively low cost investment. So if you're curious about any of these modern ones, I highly recommend you grab a set and try them. They may work for you, but also be prepared for the, that there may be some downsides.
- [14:25]
B
The board has been designed by a good designer who's using the fins to tune. Then theoretically he could be actually taking away the performance of his board. Is that, that, is that a theory? Is that a theory?
- [14:36]
A
It's kind of a theory. It's, it's more like, it's not like you're, like, it's something you can bolt on and bolt off and try back to back. So I said it's more likely that it's, it's going to shift how that board performs and it might, depending on what the rider is trying to do with that board, it may shift it to a, into a scenario. Like, it does depend on the board design, it does depend on the rider. It depends on the conditions they're riding in, their kite sizes, how loaded up they are, their fitness, all of it. Like, if, if you were to come to me and I was like, and I was to design a specific board for a specific rider for specific conditions, there's a laundry list of maybe 100 different parameters that we'll talk about to get the perfect board. When you're buying a board off the shelf, it's a designer like myself, we've designed it to fit into a set of parameters. Changing the fins will move those parameters around. It doesn't necessarily mean it'll be better or worse or otherwise, but it will shift things around. But you've had the ability to do that with standard fins forever. Like I've always recommended, like, you can change the characteristics of a board going from a 35 mil fin to a 45 mil fin, or going from a 35 mil fin to a 25 mil fin. It changes how that board handles and it may change it to be better for you and your unique riding locations. Don't know hard and fast rules. Go out and try. It is always the, is always my recommendation.
- [16:14]
B
You know, dk, I've ridden both of those fins. I've tried, I've tried both of them and I'm going to be very honest, I've only done one session on each of 30 to 40 minutes in 18 to 20 knot winds in Egypt and I didn't do it on my board. So I do have the fins and I will spend a little bit more time on them. But my initial I think we spoke about a little bit, maybe not on here, but in the past is I felt very sucked to the water. I won't say the brand one of them more than the other. I don't think that's fair right now. The tracking was impressive. You know, like you literally it felt like, it felt like you know, you could go up window. It was almost like not, not like a foil. If you jumped on a foil, you just sort of going up. But there is just a distinct sort of advantage in that. I would like to ride it more to be fair. But looking at other wind sports like sailing, I think that's the best one to look at. I think, you know, when you, when you look at car technology, a lot of that comes from what happens in Formula one. Right. It's tested at the high end. You know, stuff triples down into to the market. And I kind of feel like the high end of our sport is the America's cup for sure. Right. The, the fins or in their case keels have completely changed the way sailing is. In the past sailing a keel was a big weight below the thing to help to keep the boat as flat as possible. Therefore giving it the most performance. Not letting too much air fall off the sail or spill off the sail. Are we going in that direction where these fins could hold wholesale change the way our boards ride in the future.
- [17:56]
A
So the, there's.
- [17:57]
B
I mean I, I'm looking, I'm looking years ahead here.
- [18:00]
A
Right.
- [18:00]
B
But it has to start somewhere.
- [18:03]
A
I think that the, the dramatic change that you're thinking of was actually kite hydrofoiling like because that's a much more analogous to what's, what's going on. When we went from even going from how well traditional race boards, 4 and 3 fin like Olympic box rule style race boards going from those to hydrofoils. Even the most rudimentary hydrofoil setup could absolutely smoke a race board upwind. Because it was such a dramatic change in terms of the efficiency with twin tips. We. The fin is actually the board itself. Like in what you're thinking about like your ability to take a slice off the wind and cut up wind. If you were to analyze the. If you were to analyze the. The system compared to an America's cup yacht or a traditional sailing boat. The thing the majority of the. The resistance or the majority of the force or the force producing well surface that's creating the lift to drag us upwind is actually the board. When we're talking about fins on a twin tip. They're a tiny fraction of the whole of that whole lifting system, which is why I'm saying that they're a tuning device, not a dramatic change in what was already there. When you move from a twin tip to a hydrofoil, the hydrofoil is all of that lifting surface, all of the thing that's going upwind, and it is a dramatically different level of lift to drag compared to the edge of our twin tip bolting on a slightly different fin. I would actually argue like for any given system, you rider dependent and board design dependent, but for any given system, if you take the fins off completely and just remove that drag, you will go upwind better if you can hold like if you've got the skills to hold your edge, because you're just reducing the drag of the whole system. All of these new fins are going to be higher in drag, but the compromise of the higher in drag, like that extra drag is kind of insignificant compared to the grip or the surface area that they provide in terms of horizontal grip at the tail of the board, which is where they're making the greatest difference. So your analogy is not quite right in terms of how it will change the Sport. Well, over 20 years I've been in the sport and the equipment, the equipment tends to follow the rider's goals and aspirations. So at all times in this industry, the most amount of change that's happened on equipment has always been driven by a small group of leading edge riders who are trying to do something that the equipment was not capable of before. And so that's where these might change it. Like is having that level of additional grip, despite compromises in things like drag and landings and tripping up. Any of that stuff is primarily grip on the water, extreme grip onto the water, which is what you noticed when using them. Is that going to allow that small group of leading edge riders to do something that they weren't able to do before? Possibly. And if that's the case, then this will become mainstream. If it doesn't, it will be a flash in the pan, it'll be something of interest and it'll either sort of stay small and niche or just fade into obscurity. It's too early to tell whether that's the case here, but there has been definitely some positive feedback. There are some writers who swear by them, so that's always a good sign.
- [22:18]
B
Well, Andrea Principe is riding the portal fin these days, so yeah, no. Aya's question there also is asking will, will Brands Rethink the fins on their boards and, and start making allowances for these third parties? Or will they continue to keep the design of the, the fin and the design of the board and then let people make their own choices? I mean, if, if they do get a decent market hold, which they might, especially if people like Andre and these guys are riding them at every event. Andrea rode big handles, Everyone got big handles. Andre is going to ride these. I mean, if, if he commits to it and starts winning events on these. Watch the change. I'm telling you, people have Portal or Orca fins on all of them. By the way, I think Orca fins are designed by Board Schmieder, right? He's a board designer. I, I don't, I don't know, 100, but maybe even did a lot of testing. So maybe the Orca fins and the board schmeter design may, maybe they have that, that, that sort of symmetry that you're talking about.
- [23:19]
A
Very much so. Well, one of the things to keep in mind is standards help a lot. So the fact that I, I do not believe that there is a, a major brand in our industry now that doesn't use a 38 mil standard hole spacing on their fins. So we're all. Some brands are 6mm bolts, some brands are 5mm bolts, but the spacing is the same. So that one of the reasons that these fins are actually capable of having any sort of market penetration is that there is, there is some standardisation across the, across the industry. There are. I think, particularly with the Portal fins, they have a. It has a large flat mounting surface on the bottom of it. There are some boards where the actual shaping on the bottom of the board is. Just prevents them mounting correctly. So, yeah.
- [24:20]
B
Those Portal fins. I'm just smiling. I mean, I'm sure the boys at Portable will laugh at this, but mate, when you first get them, dude, it's a bit like a Rubik's Cube, how to put these things together because they look very similar, all four. They actually. On the bottom and they do have, they do have a picture of what corner to put it on. But if you don't. Well, at first we didn't see that, but we're like trying to put it on. It was like. It was like dumb and dumb and blinding the blind. But yeah, that's a. That's actually something. I never thought about the channels around where those fins go. Maybe that will not sit. So maybe that is something. May. Maybe the people at Portal have checked out all the boards and, and can give you Advice on what fins they're compatible with. I'm sure they wouldn't sell you a product if it wasn't compatible. I don't think anyone's in business to do that. So that's something I never thought about. Yeah. Interesting.
- [25:16]
A
It's been, it's been, it's been probably a couple of months since I went and checked their website out but they were, they did have some information on there on, on board compatibility and I think they were even asking for, for input from, from users if they've, there's a particular model that they've put them on. So yeah, that's there. If we take the big handles as an example, they were all like there were no options from main brands for taller handles at the start. Like when the likes of Andrea started using these custom made bigger handles. Now most, yeah, most brands who are in the big ear market offer some sort of riser or to raise their handles up or there is actually a really good aftermarket of big handles. So that started off as a custom solution and is now pretty much you can be at any major kite beach in the world and you'll be able to track down a solution for your board. Excessive grip, specific fins are a thing and are demanded by the market. Every single major brand will look at it and invest into it because they, they will, they all want to keep up with those, those riders right at the, right at the front of our, right at the front of our industry, right at the front of our sport. But it takes, that takes time. It like you're. When, yeah. The whole process of developing, testing, getting into production, doing all the marketing, it takes there's one to two years for a major brand to actually do that and this is kind of a new thing and it's also a serious investment. So they're not going to jump on it until it actually looks like it's got legs. More than a. Yeah. More than just an interesting experiment. So yeah it's, it's definitely a thing but mostly go out and try it in your conditions. It's. I, I've, there's never no such thing as a, like a magic bullet in this industry. Never has been. It's like you, it's just as likely to have a set of negatives that is going to work against you than it is to have positives depending on exactly what you're, what you're trying to achieve.
- [27:43]
B
In that last podcast we talked about fins, you know, way back about kiteboards you and I had spoken about, you know, fins is the least spoke about thing in the industry out outside of now that the orca, the Orca and the and the portal fins have come onto the market. But the only people you and I ever heard really talk about fins as pros. You know, like it's, you know when the pros talking about like especially like the border from the fin, right. Having a bigger fin on the back for ease of grab, talking about riding different friends, them talking about having different links on different sides of the board. It's the little things that they're looking for that most riders don't expect. Right. So yeah, if you do get a chance to try the, the portal fins or orca fins, definitely go and jump on them and try. I think what you said is interesting. Try them on your own board first. Sure. Ride them on another person's board. But they might be feel different on your board and that's something that you should, you should check out.
- [28:37]
A
Absolutely not. Good topic. Thanks for that.
- [28:41]
B
Was half the podcast just on on.
- [28:43]
A
Well that's, that was a good question. So yeah, absolutely.
- [28:49]
B
DK the other question has come a lot and always comes in is high V versus low V. Let, let's, let's use that as the second part of the answer. But there's a great question come in from our dark members here which is do hy kites have an advantage out of the box at the Red Bull Mega Loop because their line geometry won't change on an 18 meter line?
- [29:09]
A
Absolutely. Again, excellent question and super topical when we're we're now in the holding period for the Mega Loop. For the listeners who haven't heard the haven't heard what's happened. This year's Red Bull Megaloop for the men's division has the requirement is maximum line length of 18 meters. So and that's been done to really sort of push the idea of it's a megaloop comp, not a heli loop comp. So they're really wanting to see the kite come low and really push that side of the sport. Now interestingly enough with this question about do the high wye kites have an advantage out of the box? My immediate thought when I heard this that this was going to be the case was any of the kites that are currently or any of the big ear kites that are currently designed around and tuned for a highway setup are going to be are going to be likely flying very well compared to kites on the low V setup for this particular comp. And the reason for that is if you I'm just. I'm going to use very easy numbers for this because it's. That there is. It'll vary around a little bit. But let's imagine that the kite was designed and tuned around 244 meter lines on a 6 meter high front Y. So if that's being the case, a 6 meter high front Y on 24 meter lines means your, the uppers of your front lines are 18 meters long. If you take that and that kite has that, that kite, that range of kites has been, that's how it's been flowing the entire time during development. That's what the designer has tuned the bridle on that kite to work with optimally. If you take that kite and you need to ride it on 18 meter lines, the starting off point, the point that you will just jump on immediately if you understand the dynamics of kite design and that bridling is you will go to an 18 meter line set on a low V bar. And what that does is that 18 meter line set on a low V bar. Your angle from the V point to the kite is identical to what the kite was designed for. So even though the kite is being flown on a shorter line set, the dynamics at how those front lines in part load onto the bridle is based purely on the angle that it arrives to the kite or arrives at the bridle. And it's identical because of that, because it's been designed on a set of 18 meter lines that meet at a point and then effectively the kite doesn't know, at least the bridle can't tell that there's another six metres below that V point. It's the length of the V point that's important. So your, your, your Duotone kites, your Harlem kites, anything designed by Ralph on a, on a high V is potentially flying the most correct straight out of the bag. If you're flying it on that on and if, if you're flying it on an 18 meter low V setup, though it was designed on a 24 meter high V set up. The second thing that came to mind with all of this is, and I've been saying this for a very long time, when I watch any short line looper or short line rider flying their kites on, on 18s, 15s, 12 meter lines. It's very obvious as a, as a somewhat experienced kite designer, when you look at the end, especially bridal tuner, that when you look at the kite, the kite is being distorted out of shape because of those short lines. So the load on the Bridle is nothing like what the kite was designed for because of this, because the angle to the front lines is different to what it was when we were talking specifically about low V kites here. But if the kite was designed on 24 meter lines with low V and you're flying it on 12 meter lines with low V, that divergent angle is like that from the. The V point is completely different. And it is. The loads on the bridle tend to move downhill and pull the wingtips together. And it's the kite. It's very obvious that the kite isn't flying to its potential because it's on those, because it's on those low V. It was never designed around that line length. It's my feeling has always been that if you are a professional rider and you want to pursue short line lengths, then you need to work with your kite designer to retune the bridle based on that shorter line length and you will get a better performing kite. And rumor has it that there are a number of top riders in our sport who are right now working with their kite designers to optimize the tune on their kites for 18 meter lines, which is awesome. Which is exactly why like, like making this call. We're going to see like, I think we're going to see a very interesting step up in performance of riding because I think the kites are. If the kites are flying better on that line length, the riders are going to be able to do better tricks. So it's, it should be a, it should be a good win.
- [34:53]
B
How does it affect the kites? Like the north orbit, but that's a low v. How's the 18 meter going to affect the them? So for example, if the high V kites, the duotones, the Harlems, theoretically just. You're just going to take that 6 meters off the bottom and fly them on the, on that lower point. I guess. I don't know, I don't know how they're going to do it, but that, that doesn't require a brightening change. Take 5 to 6 meters off an orbit, therefore the orbit's been pulled in a little bit. Does the bridling need to be changed for this event? Just, just to let you know and you know, you said there's, you know, there are some brands Stino said in that article, mate, we've got a call next Monday with the whole team talking about the 18 meters. Look, that is why Harlem's doing well. They're so keen to push and do, do well. And work hard. I, I can't help but stand back and admire them. I don't think the big brands are like that. Maybe, maybe they're a smaller brand that can do it. So I, I don't know. But what, what's north 100%. I'm not singling out north here, but I'm just. It's the, that's the kite that comes to my mind. But there is a bunch of kites that flow on the low V. Are they going to be tuned on the bridal or are guys just going to ride on short lines?
- [36:07]
A
Firstly, I'll say if Lacuna had a rider that was selected for, for this event and we saw that there was an 18 that 18 meter lines, we would be throwing resources at at or sue would be working every day with that rider leading up to the event. We're on bridal tuning, optimizing like even just stock standard chassis. We're not talking about changing the actual design of the kite but we would be retuning the bridle on the kite to optimize for the line length that the rider wants to use for that event. And it would be a completely. You wouldn't be able to tell from the beach looking at it. But if we went and looked in the software, the differences in all of the lengths of all of the cascades on that bridle would be dramatically different to what's on the production kite. Even if we were looking at just the same distribution of pressure. Because physically the bridle has to be a different shape just to distribute the pressure the same way across the kite. But it's also very likely that that particular rider is going to be looking for a slightly different performance level or slightly different style of performance out of that kite on that line length. So it's, it's not even likely that it'll be the same pressure distribution across the bridle as the production kite. If we look at like. But there are different levels of sophistication and capability and knowledge across our industry. If I was now I, I sometimes do work for north but I'm not privy to what they're doing on this in this particular scenario. But if we use them for reference, if I was, if I was Cohen, I would be on the phone to, I would be on the phone to Pipaan and Brent and saying hey guys, I want to do the absolute best in this competition. Can I get some of Papaan's time at the beach? Can we tune, can we get some 18 meter light, get some bars with some proper 18 meter line sets. Can we go to the beach with Papaan and can we retune this bridle on these kites to get the performance that I'm looking for specifically for the competition? Who knows if that's happening with them? I know Steno has definitely said that that's the scenario that's going on at Haarlem. It would definitely be the scenario going on at Lacuna if we had a rider. Like we would be on this because it's a premier event and it's a different level of performance and we're going to learn from it. Like there is going to be things that we'll be able to take from that that might in the future be applicable to other, other products. And you've got to remember I said it earlier in this, earlier in this podcast, the, the sport that the equipment changes as the riders on the leading edge of our sport pursue things that weren't done before. And this is one of the things that some of the top riders in this water pursuing and the brands need to jump on this and go, hey, is there a specifically with bridal tuning? Do we need to be looking at optimizing our bridal tunes for this particular style of the sport? Will there be a payback in the future? So yeah, that's my, my uptake on this. I think it's, it's, it's, it's a very interesting time, especially from a like technical bridal tuning, kite design side of things. There's a lot more to it than oh, we'll just go out and fly on the shorter lines.
- [39:50]
B
What about flying a high V kite on low V? People ask me this all the time. That I went out and I changed and just put low V on the kite was amazing. I mean I, I hear it all the time. What do you suggest to that or what can you tell people about that?
- [40:05]
A
If you're not specifically trying to chase something, just always fly the kite on the bar and line set style at least if not exactly the bar and line set that the kite was designed with. Because somebody with way more knowledge of kite design has spent his full time, his or her full time job has been to develop that kite to, to the best performance they can possibly do. And they've done that on a bar and line setup that was determined before they started the kite. So it's always best to fly the kite. And like if you, if you're for no other reason, if, like if you don't, if there's not a specific reason, if you Just don't know. Like there is no hard and fast rule that high V or low V or anything's better. But there is a hard and fast rule that says probably the bar setup that the kite was designed with is the one that it's going to fly the best on. In saying that swapping between low V and high V, I throw pretty much into the same bucket as what we were talking about with these new style of fins on a twin tip, it does change how the kite flies. Now it may be that how it changes how the kite flows flies suits you. Your location, your writing style. Like there's, there's many, many factors that will come into it. The kite's performance or the kite's overall performance will move away from where it was designed or where the, where the designer intended. But there's a chance that it'll move in. Like there is a non zero chance that it's actually going to move into a. Where it moves to suits you in particular better. So no hard and fast rule. Ah, yeah. Low V is so much better than high V. I don't buy into any of that. But it is a very, very cheap and easy thing to do to actually try and see what you like. So yeah, that's my hot take on that particular question. Go out and try it.
- [42:22]
B
Let's finish on an easy one. Dk, what do kite designers do with all the prototypes they get and are they useless or can they be reused for something else? I guess the question is how many prototypes do designers go through to, to get a kite to market? I mean, that could vary depending on budget, I guess.
- [42:40]
A
So I have a distinct advantage here. I've been a product manager and involved in various different brands and the quantity of prototypes required to develop a new kite range varies greatly. And probably the single biggest variable is how complex the project is. So if the project itself has lofty goals. So it's very, it's almost the concept of a new design in kiteboarding kind of doesn't exist anymore. The closest thing to a from scratch, we didn't start with anything and we, we got to a, got to a new kite. Was actually sue starting off with Lacuna, because when we bought Lacuna, we didn't actually get the way that the company was previously done, previously structured, it was using an external kite designer. The brand didn't actually have the, the surf plan files for the kites that it was making. The designer would deliver the design, the manufacturing files to the factory, but there was no source code. So sue, when she started with Lacuna started from zero, started from the stock kite sitting inside of Cororacad. So a completely new piece of software. I'd been designing kites in Kororakad for a number of years, but she had done work in Surfland, but not in Karoracad. So the closest this industry has had in 20 years to start from zero is sue with the Lacuna Omega and now the Alpha. But for the most part, the rest of the industry, 20 years of previous files. All of the brands have their files. They're starting on. They're never starting from zero. You're starting from some reference and they're working your way forward. What will dictate the number of prototypes between the start of a project and the end of a new project or a new design is typically the goals of the project and how complicated it is. And it's fairly typical across this, across the major brands that 30 to 50 prototypes is like what you need to budget on for a new. For a new season design. But I, I've seen interviews recently with the likes of Sky Solbach from Duotone. The new Rebel is like somewhere way north of 100 prototypes for a new range. Now, Duotone, that's a huge investment. I know how much money that is in the back of my head, and that is a huge investment. But when you're the biggest brand in the industry, it's. That's just the cost of doing business. Like you want the. You give your designers a big budget when it comes to developing a new kite, especially as something like the. Something like the Rebel and then smaller brands also.
- [45:47]
B
Especially, also. Especially since they want that to be a success because of, obviously their previous designer has now left and they want, and they want to make Sky's first kites to be like, last thing you want to hear is these guys suck, you know, because X's left. So, yeah, they've heavily invested into that, you know, and it looks like it's worked too.
- [46:06]
A
The Rebel, like, that's a serious. That. That's not a little fun little side project for, For a brand like Duotone, like, that's you. That's. That's what. That kite makes serious money for the brand. If, if it's wrong and it doesn't sell, there's. There's serious consequences. Like the zeros are the zeros on the end of all of those figures start to get really serious. So throwing 100, 150 prototypes at that, that's just, that's just a good investment because you want that kite to be good the other end of the market, smaller brands have to be much more efficient. And I, my, my brand like I know how many prototypes we've made since we've owned the brand and we are incredibly efficient and we have to be. We just don't have the massive budgets. But we're also. It's not that we don't do a lot of development and we spend a lot of time on bridal tuning which probably more time on bridal tuning than a lot of other brands because we've got one, we've got our own software and two, we have our own like Sue's very particular about the tune on her bridal and that combination allows us to do. We're talking. So the Alpha V4 that was released earlier this week, we the, the number of bridal iterations on that over the two and a half years span it's taken to get that kite finished. We're talking hundreds upon hundreds of bridles, thousands of meters of bridle line have gone through to it to in all of the prototyping for that. And that was a good investment because that's where we can differentiate ourselves as really good bridal tuning because we, we really, we don't have the budget that sky has available for building, for building chassis prototypes. So. And then all the other brands are somewhere in between. The next part of that question is what happens to those prototypes? And this again depends greatly on the brand. Now the biggest brands, and I can't speak exactly for Duotone, but I know when I worked for Cabrinha, the, the prototypes were always to be destroyed once the, once the brand was finished with them. So once the designer was finished with them. And that's, there's a, there's a. Well some, some of those prototypes actually went into long term testing. So there's a, there's a team of test writers and there may be specific. That prototype might not just be a performance prototype, it may be a material, it may be a process, maybe an assembly prototype. Like there's more about that one prototype than just how it flies. And those kites tend to go into long term testing with team and test riders around the world and then at the end of that testing they'll be cut up and thrown away and they will be, they'll be used to the end of their life. The rest of the prototypes, once they were done, we would keep those as references because in case we saw any problems in production or in the market, we'd like to go back and reference what we'd done and we would keep them for a year. So basically, as soon as that model is superseded, those kites were then destroyed. And that usually involved just pulling all the bladders out, sending those to plastic, recycling and then shredding all of the fabric or like literally just cutting the kite in half. And that's just the nature of the beast. There was also, I would say there was liability issues with that brand as well. And specifically that the, the insurance for the brand in terms of public liability insurance also said, hey, it's not we. Because prototypes aren't signed off production. These are ready for public consumption. They weren't available, like they could not be sold. So there's, there's two sides, two sides to it. Other end of the market is a brand like ours, Lacuna, where we, we make our prototypes. Like as a general rule we try and make our prototypes with at least a minimum amount of printing on them. So we will actually print them. But it's pretty typical in the industry that the prototypes are built completely plain, so they'll have no printing, nothing that and they'll be made. They're typically made with old stock fabric. So the same, the same type like, type of fabric that will be used in production, but it's usually like old stock colors. So. And then sometimes prototypes are absolutely hideous when you look at the mix. Yeah, yeah. The mix of colors that are thrown together. So they're typically made from. They're made from production speak fabric, but typically old stock colours because there's no intention for them to be sold or used for anything other than just production testing Lacuna and many other small brands. But Lacuna in particular, we will put at least a minimum amount of printing on our kites. So the model number, the model size, maybe not all the details like the warning labels or anything like that, because it's a bit over the top. And we do that for two reasons. One is that we can use our prototypes for photoshoot purposes so they're good enough like we can. So while we're in the. At least getting towards the finalization of a kite, every kite that we have in our now in our prototype stack is available to give to a team rider to get at least even if it's just flowing on the beach, a shot can be taken that can be used for marketing so that, that helps keeps our. That's part of that helps keep our costs down. We don't have prototype kites and then photoshoot kites and then production kites. We try and with dual use, but we're also of the opinion that it's very. If the kite is, if the kite is usable and safe. So there are prototypes that we make that are experiments and they're not suitable for public consumption at all. Like we've experimented with something. We've decided that and for many, many different reasons whether it's the fabric the kite's made of, whether it's the tune on it. Like there could be many reasons where that kite is not suitable for public consumption. We will pull all the bladders out and use those as spare parts for the, for the future. And then we will send the kite itself off to a fabric recycler who will do things like make bags and bits and pieces. But we'll try and find a second life for that kite. And then the, the kites that are good. So they might not be as good as the production kite, but they don't. But they're good kites and we have, we always have a supply of good kites. We typically sell those off to local riders in Cape Town at a very good rate. Those kites look, for all intents and purposes look like a production kite. So that. So you're not buying a bright yellow kite that looks like. That looks without any sign writing on it that looks like crap. You can buy one of our. If you're a local rider you can buy at a reasonably good rate one of our prototype kites. We get to. We're not likely to send those overseas or anything like that. We still like to keep an eye on them because. Because they're not production, there could be problems. We'll. Yeah. And what we typically do with those as well is we'll actually build a as close as we can production spec bridle like for them when we sell them. So while we've been prototyping on them, they've been hand knotted bridles and sometimes for, I think you've seen sue will go out with three different bridles on one kite. We'll be switching between. We put a bridle on that kite and test that kite, sign it off. Yep, that's good to go. And yeah, our local team really enjoys that. Airush does a very similar thing based here. I'm sure Slingshot and Nash and the Hood River. I'm sure there's probably similar deals depending on the brand and their liability issues and that sort of thing. Thing. So that, yeah, that and that pretty much covers the different scenarios.
- [54:36]
B
Well, I think we're going to end there. Dk, I do want to ask three questions.
- [54:41]
A
That's Excellent question.
- [54:43]
B
I, I, I do want to ask you but I won't do it this time. You know, Andrea has famously removed the pulley from his, his D lab kite. Very, very specific for him. Let's get into that later. That's going to be interesting till the end of the year anyway.
- [55:01]
A
We could pull Gillian in on that one as well because him and I have actually had good discussions about that. I know Gillian wants to, has some opinions on things like lines. We could, we could do another, another three way with that one because I think it's, yeah, I think that would be an interesting one. But yeah, it is something we've, I've noted in the past. So that would be good.
- [55:21]
B
To all the people who have sent in questions. Look guys, there's eight pages of, eight pages of questions here. So we will over the next few techcast just work our way through those. There are some, I, I probably need to go through and group these a little bit better just to, you know, because there's some stuff that's quite similar. But dk, thanks again for your time. That's unbelievable. We only got through three of the 28 questions here. This, we could be doing the same May for the next few years at this rate. But mate, absolutely awesome as usual. Thanks again for your time. Congratulations by the way on launching your first kite with the Alpha. That's been a long time coming.
- [55:58]
A
I saw the review actually number two, the first one was the Omega V4 which was last year, but no, the Alpha V4 launch on the website this last week. And yes, thank you very much to Jason Montreal of his review of that. It's a very exciting kite for us and we're like, we're super, super stoked because it's like timing couldn't be better. We're going into the woo worlds and yeah, we're quite like this. Yeah. If you want to set a new, a new Woo pb, you need to get your hands on this kite. It goes up. That's the best way to describe it. It goes up. So yeah, it's absolutely fantastic. And yeah, thank you to all of the listeners who have put in those. Well, the three questions that we did, we did this month.
- [56:52]
B
We're going to get to the rest of them, guys. Thank you, thank you to everybody. We'll get to the rest of them.
- [56:56]
A
Absolutely. I think it says something about the quality of the question is that, that we could only cover three in one because they're really good topics and they're really on, they're really on point. So yeah, thank you for everyone who put those in and we will catch you next month which will be. Yeah, actually will be straight after the world. So we got all sorts of interesting things to discuss then. I bet.
- [57:20]
B
Good luck to cta.
- [57:22]
A
Yeah, good luck to your team as well. Fingers crossed. All I need, all I need for my team. All I need, I need my top 10 riders. I need to get them all to masa on a 35 to 40 knot day with a 2 meter swell. If I get that in the, in.
- [57:40]
B
The month, I'm not asking for much, are you dk?
- [57:42]
A
It's a very good chance right now. Right now it's looking like we could get that conditions on the opening day. Yeah, so, so and actually for us that this time of the year like the Woo Worlds now it's two weeks later than last than last year's event and way better for us. Like, like those first two, like our last three Octobers have been absolute, absolutely macking. So those, those first two weeks in October are very, very likely. The only thing I'm concerned about, like really the only thing that, that could put a spanner in our works is if the Mega loop gets called at about the same time as we've got a good Macassar session coming through. Because all of my top riders are just going to be on planes to Europe and I'm like. But they will. Every single one of them will have a requirement to have a Woo on their board in the, in the Mega Loop. Because I need that, I need those, I need those results. So we'll see. But my, my top like the, the thing being like looking at my team, even my, my second five, if they just pb.
- [58:52]
B
Okay, okay, okay.
- [58:55]
A
My, my second five can take it for me. So, so I'm, I'm. I'm quietly confident. Let's see how we go.
- [59:01]
B
So cheers dk. Thanks mate.
- [59:03]
A
Cheers, Adrian. Thanks mate.
- [59:04]
B
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